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Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her remarks. She asked whether I was pleased to be in charge of waste. My Secretary of State the other day accused me of having become, after just nine months, what she described as a ““waste nerd””. I had to say yes and took pride in the fact that I had become a waste nerd; it is a subject of great interest to me and should be of great interest to all of us. I hope that this is a matter we will come back to in due course, when the waste review comes out in May. That is our current estimate; the trouble is that May seems very close at hand now but that is when we hope to get it out. It cannot come out in April because of local government elections and the purdah that goes with those. This is a matter that affects local government to a great extent. However, we hope to get it out in May. I hope we will have considerable discussions on the whole subject of waste—on how it should be seen as a resource and not just as waste; how we should dispose of waste; and how we should meet all our commitments. We will deal with those matters at that time. I am not sure that tonight is necessarily the opportunity to go through all that. If we do, I suspect all those waiting to debate Manchester might get somewhat irritated with me because I would take up too much time, having become a waste nerd. The noble Baroness also referred to my noble friend Lord Deben, who said that he wanted to make sure there was no loss of momentum. Following that, she referred to various EU comparisons. It is always worth looking at what other countries in the EU are doing and how they deal with these matters. Looking downwards, it is always worth looking at what different local authorities do. By pursuing a policy of localism—which might mean that some authorities do better than others and that there is an element of postcode lottery—rather than trying to impose the same system from above, we can learn new things. Certainly, we look at what is happening in Europe. It is also worth pointing out that we are not necessarily doing worse than many of our European comparators. Only today I saw some representatives of the packaging industry. They explained to me how well we had done in reducing packaging. After all, reducing waste is the most important part of the whole waste strategy. We have seen virtually no growth in our packaging waste over the past 10 or so years, despite the growth in the economy, whereas most other countries in Europe have. I do not know whether those figures covered England or the UK, but that is an area in which we are doing very well indeed and of which we should be proud. I pay tribute to what the previous Government did and what we shall continue to do when we come forward with our waste review, which I hope the noble Baroness will welcome in due course. I will deal with one or two of the points that have been made by both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on this. I can say only mea culpa—or somebody culpa—for what the noble Lord said about the document produced by the Stationery Office not necessarily being printed on recycled paper. That is probably a matter for the Stationery Office. However, I will ask officials to take it up and ask what the Stationery Office is doing about the use of recycled paper. That is important because it is something that Defra is very keen to do, not only by example within the department but by encouraging it throughout the whole government estate, to make sure that we do the right thing. Dare I say at this stage—two or three months before we produce our waste review—that I will give a guarantee that that will be produced on recycled paper and will be as environmentally friendly as it is possible to be? The next important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, is on this very difficult question of co-mingled waste collection. I appreciate that there are concerns about this. Speaking from my own experience of having been a Minister for Waste for all of nine months, and the number of visits I have made to materials recycling facilities—MRFs, normally shortened to ““Merf””—I can say that the technology gain with MRFs is improving by the day. They are getting much better at separating the different recyclables from a co-mingled collection. That is very important, because only some authorities can pursue a policy of having a good kerbside separation which is appropriate for that particular authority and which seems to be the best at giving purer recyclables at the end. Technology will move on and will make MRFs even better at separating things. In the mean time, we have to accept that different authorities have to do different things. That is one of the reasons why I am a great believer in localism. I appreciate that my noble friend Lord Tyler said that there were real dilemmas in localism. One point that people always make is that it leads to what is called a postcode lottery. I do not think that that particularly matters, provided that the postcode lottery means that the best ones always get better and encourage the less good ones to follow them upwards. The other advantage of the so-called postcode lottery and of the localism view, which is particularly true in waste collection, is that any idea that the Government imposed their own rules top down would be wrong. We would get it wrong. Different local authorities pursue different ideas—it is almost the Maoist approach of letting 100 flowers bloom. I see the colleague of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, laughing; he hears a Tory talking about flowers. However, having different approaches coming from different authorities allows different ideas to be developed and I believe that that is good. When I started visiting local authorities and watching the whole collection and disposal process, the first one I visited, not far from me, was Richmondshire in North Yorkshire. It is a very different place from the London borough of Richmond. Similarly, I live in Carlisle, partly an urban and partly a rural seat. It is very different from the other place I live in, Westminster. They offer very different services because of their different nature: the houses are high-rise, or whatever. Local authorities have to do different things, and some will want to pursue the co-mingled route and some another. The assurance we sought from the EU—which I gather the previous Administration also did—is that co-mingled will be satisfactory in terms of dealing with whether this is genuinely recyclable. But that is a matter that will have to be kept under review. Lastly, may I deal with the question of timing to which my noble friend, Lord Tyler, referred? I appreciate that it is a matter that should have been dealt with by December 2010. However, as I think my honourable friend Mr Benyon made clear in another place, we thought it was better—as did the previous Government—to overplay the consultations to ensure that we got these matters absolutely right, that we were not going to gold-plate the directive and that all our measures were achievable. I hope that with that in mind, as well as the fact that in due course we will be producing our waste review, which I look forward to debating with the noble Baroness and others, the Committee is prepared to accept these regulations. Motion agreed.